The app making healthcare accessible in South Africa

South Africa struggles with just 200,000 healthcare workers for a population of 54 million, which means its doctor to patient ratio is one to 270. With long queues and few hospitals, the people who are most in need of medical aid do not necessarily have access to it.

But one app is trying to help solve that. AitaHealth trains community health workers who offer counseling and home treatment, focusing on preventive care.

“We’ve developed a solution that allows our community healthcare workers to visit clients on a household level or school or workplace,” AitaHealth’s CEO, Jacques de Vos, told CNN.

In addition, in collaboration with South Africa’s largest telecom company, Vodafone, AitaHealth passes on information about infections to the government.

“They will capture information on a day to day basis and then all of this information gets aggregated into the cloud,” de Vos added.